Nesbitt: GOP budget deal "assault" on schools

You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters

By Laura Leslie

While House and Senate Republicans spent their day touting their "bipartisan" budget deal, Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt said today that Senate Democrats don't like it.

The deal puts about $240 million more into public school funding than the previous Senate plan did. An earlier $390 million dollar cut to teachers' aides in grades 1-2 is no longer in the budget. But schools would be asked to cut $124 million more at the local level.

Nesbitt accused GOP leaders of "abdicating their responsibility," attempting to pass the buck for cuts to local officials while claiming to protect the classroom.

The latest compromise, Nesbitt said, does nothing more than "rearrange the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic.

"It's still the Titanic," he added, "and it's still going down."

Nesbitt called on Republicans to back down from their "assault on public education" by agreeing to extend part of a one-percent temporary sales tax increase scheduled to end July 1st. The governor's budget extended 3/4ths of one cent, bringing in an additional $840 million in revenue. Senate Democrats: Budget deal no deal for NC

GOP leaders have said they won't consider extending any part of the tax. Nesbitt says they should reconsider.

"There are still half a billion dollars in cuts to public education in here that are not necessary," Nesbitt said. "It's about making choices."

maryburkett1Jun 2, 2011

I don't understand much about how polticians work, but if the governor had not spent the lottery money for other things would she have money needed for teachers aides and didn't all the other dem follow her and now have the nerve to cry fowl because the rep want to cut back

jaJun 2, 2011

You can lower a tax in the future, you can't grow an economy with an under educated population.

1 awesome DadJun 2, 2011

I will never understand how we can sit here and tax and tax and tax and other states have no payroll tax or sales tax and their prices are in line with ours and their roads dont beat you to death, they dont have tolls, they dont have illiterate children and they dont bicker and demean each other over politics and other important areas.

Maybe our leaders should spend some time over there and figure things out.

driverkid3Jun 1, 2011

Amen, joseph, AMEN! That is all they care about, NOT that the economy is in the terlit and is not getting any better. They don't stop to think that THEY are the ones that dropped it in there to start with.

josephlawrence43Jun 1, 2011

of course the Demos don't like it--it takes away additional tax money that they wanted to collect and spend on only God knows what..Same thinking that got us into this hole over the past 100 or so years...